E-book pricing and perception of value
There's something happening in one corner of the book world that is terrifying me, and it's all to do with e-book pricing and perception of value. I'm still all tangled up in the arguments flying around, but there is one thing about this which I really don't like the look of; giving one-star reviews to e-books because the price has been perceived as too high.
Now if you are not an e-reader owner, and don't intend to be, stick with me, because I'd really like to hear your opinion as someone with perhaps a more neutral perspective.
The e-book revolution
Never before have so many novels been so readily available. With an e-reader, a book can be bought and downloaded in seconds, ready to read immediately on your device of choice. No waiting for the post to deliver your order, no trip to the local book shop (if it even exists in your part of the world any more) and no wait for it to come into the library.
On the other side of the coin, this has opened up opportunities for self-publishers and small presses unlike anything else before, enabling more people (hell, myself included!) than ever to make their writing available to people without having to invest a huge amount of money to do so.
Sounds good, right? Yes, and it is. But something has been happening to the perception of value of e-books that is turning quite ugly, and is creating a group of people that are leaving one star reviews for books (big mainstream books as an example here ) as a protest against the price.
As a protest against the price. I repeat that, because that is what I find terrifying. And confusing. Perhaps I am ignorant, but I am struggling to think of any other creative product or industry in which the creator / artist is given bad ratings due to the price of their product. Do people tell others that an exhibition of art is crap because they can't afford paintings that cost several thousand pounds? Has anyone tried to dissuade others from going to see a musical because the tickets cost over fifty pounds per person? Do people give one-star reviews in their droves to DVDs and Xbox and PS3 games because of the price?
No.
Ah, you might say, these people leaving one star reviews aren't trying to dissuade people from reading the book, just from paying the set price for the e-version, so it's not the same.
Well, I beg to differ. You see, I believe reviews of books are a critical part of social proof, they really do make a difference to someone deciding to buy a book or not. Whilst it is possible to read down into the comments and see that it's about price, some people just scan the average rating, and it may well affect how visible that book is, along with sales. I have a very limited understanding of the arcane art of rising books in Amazon ranking, I hasten to add.
But it goes further than that. Some people are even urging the authors to tell their publishers to change the price, and according to one article I read and cannot for the life of me remember where, have even accused the author of greed for not taking a stand!
Now, 20 Years Later is being published as an e-book in May, and I have no control over its price whatsoever. If the book starts to receive one-star reviews in this kind of mob protest, I will be devastated.
These people want to attack publishers for greed (and whether that is right or not is another vicious argument to be held another day) for pricing their e-books above $2.99, or even above $0.99, or just far enough below the cost of the paperback or hardback version, but it is the author who suffers. And that just doesn't seem fair. Why not email the publisher? Why not email Amazon? Why punish the person who wrote the book and has no choice over pricing whatsoever?
What about the retailers?
Reading the comments on any post about this issue on any of the high traffic sites like the one I linked to above can be very depressing. In that article, the people leaving one star reviews are incensed by the fact that the hardcover costs less than the e-book, and on a surface level, that does seem insane. But no-one seems to be talking about Amazon's aggressive pricing policies that can lower the price of a hardback to get more sales, and in doing so making it lower than the e-book, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were hoping it would cause exactly this kind of furore. They have been doing all they can, it seems, to drive down e-book prices, and it's not surprising seeing as it is in their interest to do so to make more people buy Kindles and tie them into using them.
Perception of value
And another thing that bothers me about these surface level arguments is that people are saying that an e-book should be cheap as chips because no physical item exists, and therefore costs less to produce.
Since when has a good book been easy and cheap to produce? If nothing else a lot of time is put into it, and if anyone other than the author gets involved, they need to be paid. But I'm not going to get sidetracked, as I want to just focus on the perception of value and how it seems so incredibly distorted when it comes to fiction e-books. Our little corner of the industry is up in arms about charging anywhere up to $15 for an e-book version of a novel, when the self-help corner of the e-book industry charges anywhere between $0-$200 or more for e-books which are only a fraction of the word count (which is a poor way to measure value too, but stick with me here).
It seems to me that the self-help industry e-book publishers can charge higher prices because there is a perception that they are selling a solution, rather than "just an e-book". And the really big people in that industry are making a hell of a lot of money. I have no problem with that, I just find it interesting to compare that with people being incensed by fiction e-book prices that are a fraction of the price of self-help books.
What is that saying? That fiction is less important? That because it doesn't offer some kind of solution to a problem that's stopping you earning tonnes of money and being successful, it doesn't merit even a small price? Even though they are both digitally delivered?
I don't know. Seems all backwards to me. I'm not saying for an instant that fiction e-books should be priced equivalently, because that is just stupid, but I would like to see less aggressive behaviour when an author's work is in the public domain with a price they have not set.
And yes, this is because I'm an author and I'm afraid it will happen to me. Absolutely. And it's not because I am greedy, as all writers know, the last thing we do this for is the money. I am afraid that my book will not be rated based on its plot, its characters, my ability to weave a world that takes you far away from your own, but will instead be used as a throwaway tool in an argument about pricing that is entirely beyond my control.
